Al Capone`s Safe Might Star During Opening Night On Tv

A basement vault that may have belonged to gangster Al Capone may be opened soon by a California production company hoping to create a television special, the vault`s owner said Monday.

Although details are not final, the film company has offered $5,000 for permission to X-ray the mysterious ``sealed vault,`` believed to contain some bounty from Capone`s vice heyday, according to Patricia Porter, executive director of Sunbow Foundation, which owns the Lexington Hotel at Cermak Road and Michigan Avenue.

She declined to disclose the name of the production company.

Porter said that if producers elect to open the vault, the foundation would get $50,000 and would receive 1 percent of the royalties from any airing of a special.

Sunbow, a nonprofit school for women in construction trades, would use the money to renovate the hotel as a museum as well as a housing and office center for women, she said.

The vault, discovered last winter during renovation, gained national attention in May when the Internal Revenue Service served Sunbow with claims for $806,000 in back taxes, interest and penalties it said Capone owed when he died in 1947.